"When fascism comes to America, it will be wrapped in the flag and carrying the cross."
-- Sinclair Lewis

Tuesday, January 22, 2013

Obama's Inaugural Speech Was About Ordinary American Families, Not About Republican Politicians In DC

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Far right congressmen like Steve King (R-IA) found President Obama off-putting

The GOP just doesn't get it. The President fired up the country with an inspiring Inaugural speech filled with hope and promise-- what South Dakota Republican lunkhead John Thune disapprovingly referred to as "30,000-foot stuff." Thune will never understand the kind of speech President Obama gave; that's why he's a Republican. This was a speech for the American people, not for grubby Republican politicians who immediately went into victim mode, whining that Obama didn't offer them any reconciliation. What clowns!The President-- as guilty as any politician of almost always pandering to the middle class-- offered hope to the millions of American families living in poverty today, if not to multimillionaire right-wing Members of Congress like John McCain (R-AZ- $10.35 million), Michael McCaul (R-TX- $294.21 million), Darrell Issa (R-CA- $220.40 million), Vern Buchanan (R-FL- $44.21 million), Bob Corker (R-TN- $21.18 million) and Mike Kelly (R-PA- $11.90 million). And President Obama became the first president in history to use the Inaugural address to fold millions of gay and lesbian citizens into the Great American Family. I'm surprised none of them had heart attacks when the President said, "We, the people, declare today that the most evident of truths-- that all of us are created equal-- is the star that guides us still; just as it guided our forebears through Seneca Falls, and Selma, and Stonewall." Paying homage to a bunch of Feminazis and runaway slaves is bad enough if you're a Republican but to refer to a mob of transvestites in New York City beating up policemen who had been abusing and exploiting them and thereby getting the whole gay-liberation war rolling... how that must have inflamed cowardly obdurate closet queens like Lindsay Graham (R-SC), Trent Franks (R-AZ), Miss McConnell (R-KY), Patrick McHenry (R-NC), Aaron Schock (R-IL), Dave Camp (R-MI) and the rest. "Our journey," he continued, "is not complete until our gay brothers and sisters are treated like anyone else under the law." To a fearful Republican like any of the above, these are scary partisan words, red flags and danger signals.Phrases like "the patriots of 1776 did not fight to replace the tyranny of a king with the privileges of a few or the rule of a mob" and "through blood drawn by lash and blood drawn by sword, we learned that no union founded on the principles of liberty and equality could survive half-slave and half-free" were no doubt interpreted by Republicans as affronts to their ideology-- if not outright attacks on everything they and their party stands for. "Together," he intoned, "we determined that a modern economy requires railroads and highways to speed travel and commerce; schools and colleges to train our workers." That isn't what you learn in Asshole 101 at Republican College. Republican senators don't identify with the goals and aspirations of ordinary Americans; they're not part of that "we." So they were furious that Obama excluded them. and they're not part of these "togethers": "together, we discovered that a free market only thrives when there are rules to ensure competition and fair play" and "together, we resolved that a great nation must care for the vulnerable, and protect its people from life’s worst hazards and misfortune." It probably took all they could muster to just not stand up and walk out in disgust, or start screeching like Joe Wilson (R-SC) once did at a formal televised speech.

“I would have liked to have seen some outreach,” said Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.), who lost to Obama in the 2008 presidential race. “This is the eighth [inauguration] that I've been to and always there's been a portion of the speech where [the president says], 'I reach out my hand because we need to work together.’ That wasn't in this speech."...Sen. Susan Collins (R-Maine) said she believed Obama intended to reach out to Republicans in his second term, but that the speech strayed too far toward partisan rhetoric... “I had hoped his speech would be a little less partisan than it was at times, but I nevertheless think he intends to reach out and work together, and I liked the diversity of the program,” Collins said.

McCain himself must have found it personally galling to have the president dare to say-- and right in front of him-- that "We, the people, still believe that enduring security and lasting peace do not require perpetual war." McCain's entire disgraceful career is based on perpetual war. He surely must have felt very much the odd man out in terms of what normal Americans hear when someone makes a pitch for ending war. And the KKK member of the Senate, Alabama's always confused and fact-averse Jeff Sessions summed up the reaction from all his Confederate colleagues who are mortified to see an African-American in the White House: "The president just doesn’t get it. No economic plan can succeed that ignores our staggering and surging debt." Steve King (R-IA), probably the biggest troll in the House, was flipping out because the President dared to address Global Warming as a problem that has to be faced and dealt with. His remarks on climate change “took me back a little bit,” said King. No doubt. Perhaps he could have won King over by admitting the Sandy Hook massacre was a hoax he had perpetrated so he could grab everyone's guns. Short of that... there's probably not much the President could say to please the hard-core anti-democracy America-haters like Sessions and King.

Easily the most extreme right senator outside the old Confederacy, is Wisconsin reactionary Ron Johnson. He was whining that Obama's speech wasn't all about dismantling Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid, Johnson's priorities. “We as Republicans have to show the American people this is what the problem is, this is how serious it is, this is why it needs to be addressed... That’s always been the problem with this president. He gives wonderful speeches, his rhetoric is phenomenal, but he does the exact opposite. He says, ‘I’m willing to work with you’ and then he doesn’t. It’s very disappointing.” And one of the "big thinkers" behind modern Republican Party politics, Fox TV clown Bill O'Reilly, asserts that Obama won't help the GOP end the social safety net because he sees Republicans as “purveyors of white privilege.” O'Reilly celebrated Martin Luther King Day on his hate-filled show by baring his racist fangs:

“It's pretty clear that [Obama] doesn't like them because he doesn't feel-- he feels that they are the purveyors of white privilege. He's never going to say that, but that's the theme that runs through his advisors: The white privilege has to be broken down.”

2 Comments:

I never thought I'd agree with a Repub senator but Johnson said it all: "That’s always been the problem with this president. He gives wonderful speeches, his rhetoric is phenomenal, but ..... "

It would be a VERY large surprise if the president's long-awaited word's on climate change prove to be anything more than, to paraphrase a Roman poet, "broadcast onto running water." Dirty water at that.

This would be completely independent of the much-invoked intransigence of the Republican nasty people.

The Nebraska governor has just given the final approval for a route for the proposed Keystone XL oil pipeline. The only hurdle now is Dept of State approval. Obama has already made a cheerleading visit to the Oklahoma site of the beginning of the planned line (not needing State Dept approval) connecting XL to south Texas refineries ... and export zone.

The only foreseeable delay for XL will be finding the appropriate REPUBLICAN nominee for Secretary of State. That's assuming Ms Clinton doesn't approve it on her way out of town

I'd suggest that it is not only "Republican senators (who) don't identify with the goals and aspirations of ordinary Americans." To that august list of exceedingly vile turds, one must, unfortunately, add the solid (if not "vast") majority of Democratic senators.